When I mentioned on Tim Brownson’s blog that anyone can achieve personal peace right now he was sceptical. Actually sceptical is not the mot juste here. He didn’t believe me.

So it occurred to me that if I am prepared to make such a claim it’s no use to anyone if I keep it to myself. Better tell you how to achieve personal peace right now right now. Not later.

Peace is easy because it’s the absence of stuff. I might not be able to tell you how to achieve a state of joy right now, or inspiration, because those are positive states, those are things you bring in. (Actually I may be able tell you how to achieve them one day too – I’ll get back to you on that.) But peace is simply letting go and allowing it to be.

How do you let go?

That’s easy too. Easiest thing in the world. Imagine you are hanging onto a rope for dear life because you are suspended by it over some abyss. Leaving aside the concept of a terrifying drop and painful, if mercifully quick, death it’s much easier to let go of the rope than hang onto it. You loosen your muscles. You relax.

Okay, so you die if you choose personal peace in this example which may or may not be the aim of the exercise, but bear with me for a minute. Let’s move from there to my habit of holding up any aeroplane I may be in by the armrests. Same instinctual response to danger as in the example above but considerably less effective. A waste of energy, in fact. Even if the plane were doing somersaults at the time or plunging vertically towards the earth, I’m pretty sure my armrest manoeuvres would make no difference to the outcome. I am yet to hear a flight crew after a near miss congratulating its passengers and saying, ‘Thanks for your armrest assistance, guys. We could never have done it without you. ‘

How about supporting your favourite football team or tennis star? We attach ourselves to an outcome with our muscles just like holding onto a rope to prevent actual death, or holding up an aeroplane just in case. It’s essentially the same bodily response and peace is achieved in the same way. Relax the muscles. Of course supporting a sports star or team is something we choose to do so peace isn’t always the preferred option, but there are plenty of situations in our lives in which we habitually resort to the Aeroplane Armrest Response. Perhaps you have applied for a job that seems perfect for you or that will provide a desperately-needed income; perhaps you are in an audition for a gig that could launch the actualisation of all your dreams; maybe you are going through chemotherapy for cancer or are waiting for the results of an HIV test.

We think it’s inevitable that we would worry in these situations in spite of the fact that worrying, contracting our soul, will make no difference to the outcome, or may even be detrimental. I’m saying don’t clench. Don’t resist and don’t clench. Feel afraid openly. Don’t try to be calm, to look on the bright side, to be strong, to stay positive. Allow all the feelings you may naturally be experiencing, and allow them with no resistance. Make like flywire, as I said to Tim Brownson, don’t set up a solid bodily reflection of the outcome you do not want, allow the outcome and all its demons to pass through you, or even to stay and party for a while, unimpeded.

Breathing can help.

Now I know that if you are reading this you are probably breathing already but let me explain. I have had two babies via the route God intended and I was taught breathing exercises  to use in chidbirth during my first pregnancy. We learned to breathe more deeply and slowly than before to the extent that we could watch the second hand do a full circuit of the clock face as we took one breath in and let it slowly out again. And we did exercises of contracting the muscles in, say, one leg and having someone check the floppiness of all our other limbs. Because childbirth is the extreme contraction of certain muscles which are best left unaided by the rest. I mean you can’t facilitate the process of childbirth by holding up the armrests. You can hinder it.

It’s hard to take deep, slow breaths into your diaphram, through the middle and upper sections of your lungs at the same time as holding a resistance pattern in your body. It’s easy, on the other hand, to notice where you are holding resistance and to let it go if you are breathing consciously.

The resistance model of achievement.

We are used to being in a process of achieving the life we want, of becoming the person we want to be, and we are used to thinking we have to reject everything that exists that isn’t a part of that ideal in order to propel us there. In other words we set up patterns of resistance to what is in our bodies, we hold the aeroplane up by the armrests. 

In fact there is no logical reason for doing it this way. There is no need to reject our current state to allow something different to take its place. For most of us the absence of a state of peace is a habitual state of rejection of what is. What about allowing everything as it is? What about allowing yourself to be exactly who you are right now? You may be able to think of a better option but you don’t have to clench to get there. I can give you a clench-free method of getting there one of these days too. Start here, and be at peace in this place.

The answer in a nutshell.

Make like flywire, let it flow through. Don’t clench. Let it be. Let the aeroplane fly. It will anyway.